Wednesday, December 05, 2007

You know the disaster is a good one when you see your part of the country on CNN.

All the water you see in these pictures shouldn't be there (except the bottom one where it should be a skinny creek bed). This top one is a shot from my bedroom window looking past the barn into the lowlands. I took this picture on Monday as 7 inches of rain fell in a very short period of time here in Northwestern Oregon.

I drove 10 minutes away to get my nieces from school early, and had to drive through several stretches where water was over the road, and over bridges where the creeks were swollen beyond recognition.

This morning I went out to the garage to check the damage to our stuff -- which we stored in my brother & sister-in-law's garage (more like a barn, but they would be parking their cars in there if my crap wasn't taking up the space). Fortunately it has a gravel floor and we had boards under our boxes, so there doesn't appear to be any major damage. I pulled out the boxes with photo albums and put them in better boxes and moved them to the drier shop area but there's still a lot more to go through. I just can't do it all alone in one day.

Oh how I wish our house would sell so we could move into our own place and we could have our things around us. It is so hard to think of being here all winter with our stuff mildewing in the garage. No matter how wonderful our hosts are, and how much we love our family, we certainly didn't think we'd be here this long, much less months more down the road.

In the meantime, the flood waters are receding in this part of Oregon. We're between Portland and the Coast, where people have lost lives, homes, and if nothing else, electricity for a while. It puts a few soggy boxes of my replaceable life into proper perspective.

It is estimated that half the people in Vernonia, Oregon lost their homes and all their contents...so if you're in the giving mood, please donate to the Red Cross or just click on the title of this post and it'll take you right there.